8 Google Trends Tips Anyone Can Use

The guys at Google are probably lucky enough to have all kinds of trend data at their fingertips. For the rest of us, Google Trends is limited.

While Google Trends does offer some insights into demand for current affairs topics, without you asking, you don’t get all the answers.

If, for example, you know that GDPR is trending, you can’t use Google Trends to look up which search phrases are the most popular. The tool gives you levels of demand, on a scale of one to 100, for specific search queries.

It doesn’t suggest queries to you. That’s what Keyword Planner is for – even though Google has reduced that tool’s capacity to serve as an organic research tool.

You can do some clever things with Google Trends

Despite its limitations, you can do some clever things with Google Trends and I will take you through eight examples of these here.

1. Track downward trends

This graph shows the decline in UK search demand for the phrase cheap flights. This may reflect falling overall demand, but it could also mean the audience now has ways of finding cheap flights other than organic search.

Remember, the trend graph is not an exact match for search volume. It is a score out of 100, showing demand relative to a peak.

This graph clearly shows that the demand level for ‘cheap flights’ has declined rapidly. Thinking about it, this makes sense. We now have access to smartphone apps from airlines and other travel companies, so we are less likely to search for cheap flights.

Also, since Google launched its Flights service, and with people using more long-tail questions, we no longer need to search for cheap flights on Google. We can just select the airports and hit go.

2. Compare one thing with another

This graph shows the search demand over time for yoga versus aerobics. Probably no surprise that aerobics, which was big in the 80s, has low demand compared with yoga, whose popularity is still growing.

Think about how many movies and TV programmes feature someone going to or talking about yoga. How often do people talk about doing aerobics these days?

3. Compare your demand with a competitor

There is a clear upward demand for brand searches for Slimming World, compared with a general decline for Weight Watchers – suggesting contrasting fortunes for each of the brands.

You can do the same thing, comparing your brand name with the brand name of one or more competitor. See whose name has the highest demand. Bear in mind that any brand name that is also a generic phrase is likely to have a false graph.

4. Find out which questions are the most popular

By querying Google Trends for single question words, you can get an idea for which words appear more frequently in searches.